Keep my predictions close by, kids. Don Iveson's eco-paradise is all a big lie, and one day in the future when none of the promised benefits have arrived, I hope you take every means necessary to ensure he pays dearly for the horrific thing he has done.

Well congrats, the airport capable of handling small and medium length trips and landing the passengers less than 20 minutes from downtown (during rush hour) is being closed down. Thank God we can finally be a world class city and stop having more than one airport like all those other second-rate cities like New York or London or Vancouver or Chicago or LA or Paris or Beijing.

Seriously the only reason that there's any animosity to the airport in the first place is that Mandel and his fellow fetishers irrationally against the City Centre Airport have spent two decades demonizing it. Remember when we needed to consolidate in order to keep the International attractive to international flights? And for the next decade we lost more and more long-haul flights anyways (a situation that, surprise surprise, ended when the boom was in full effect)? And then after requiring planes to carry 11 passengers or fewer (most small charter planes hold 19, so we wouldn't even let those planes run at capacity), the airport was slagged for being a playground for an elite few. Well who's idea was that?

Next of course we heard that the airport was keeping buildings low: yet dozens of miles from the airport and far off the flightpaths approaching the runways, city council continually approved new developments with 5 story maximum height restrictions -- placing their heights well below places like the cement factory or the Charles Camsell which are within a mile of City Centre Airport.

What other bogeymans has Mandel and his crew been throwing out there? He's also lied incessently about a desperate plan to raze the land for promised "green uber-dense urban housing"...which developers will reject and push (ultimately successfully) for more Silver Berry-dense single dwellings only punctuated with the occasional walkup or single-story strip mall. Twenty years from now when the old airport lands are no more densely developed than Fort Road will Mandel and Iveson and their ilk have to pay any price at all? Will we eventually be able to sprawl out enough to make up for the fact that without City Centre Airport Edmonton will in fact have the MOST DISTANT airport from the core in North America? Is this the legacy that the airport closure fetishers are so anxious to have? Have the ol' Leduc International continue to make us a laughing stock, with the ultimate tax sinkhole that a crime ridden inner city housing project shall become the only consolation prize?

Edmonton has no qualms dropping a few billion on an "Expo" that won't even be officially sanctioned or recognized, but when it comes to spending a fraction of that money in infrastructure to turn City Centre Airport into a break even if not profitable venture, the city would rather burn the continual costs of its decision to hobble the airport.

And after all of this, Mandel's quick to do everything in his power to block a petition from possibly forcing him to listen to the judgment of the ungrateful city denizens who probably want their OWN under-the-table cut from some developer.

But hey, its okay, we've decided to officially "close it down". That, the fetishers now tell us, makes it a "dead issue". Like gay marriage or Quebec separatism, it didn't matter how many times anybody voted "no" to closure, but its that last "yes" vote that forever seals the deal. Great news! The LRT expansion is a major and divisive issue, and I'm opposed to it entirely, so all we have to do is hold a vote to demolish the existing LRT. So all you people who insist that our representatives on city council (who curiously never said a word about the airport until the polls closed) are the final arbiters and that once a "close it down" vote is passed that's the end of it, if this vote ever happens to close the LRT you'll sit quiet about it? You'll tell some meddling provincial politician to go back to Calgary rather than muse about plebiscites?

Or is this all just a smokescreen to cover the fact that you're mad you can't fly to the City Centre Airport, and you don't know enough to blame the same incompetents who supported this closure for effectively closing it in 1995?

2010-09-08

He loves All the children of abraham. The koran states that as well, as does all scripture from all great religions

As one might expect from a writer for the Huffington Post, only 140 characters from this tweet are untrue.

To confirm, look no further than Islamicity's Koran search engine. Lets start by searching for the string "abraham children" (boolean AND is automatically implied by the search engine). First passage?

2:132 (Asad) And this very thing did abraham bequeath unto his children, and [so did] Jacob: "O my children! Behold, God has granted you the purest faith; so do not allow death to overtake you ere you have surrendered yourselves unto Him."

Second passage:

2:133 (Asad) Nay, but you [yourselves, O children of Israel ,] bear witness that when death was approaching Jacob, he said unto his sons: "Whom will you worship after I am gone?" They answered: "We will worship thy God, the God of thy forefathers abraham and Ishmael [108] and Isaac, the One God; and unto Him w;1l we surrender ourselves."

And the third and final passage:

14:35 (Asad) AND [remember the time] when abraham spoke [thus]: "O my Sustainer! Make this land secure, [49] and preserve me and my children from ever worshipping idols

The word love, you may observe, appears nowhere in these passages. Okay, how about "love abraham"? When you do that search you find a whopping two passages.

4:125 (Asad) And who could be of better faith than he who surrenders his whole being unto God and is a doer of good withal, and follows the creed of abraham, who turned away from all that is false - seeing that God exalted abraham with His love?

29:25 (Asad) And [abraham] said: “You have chosen to worship idols instead of God for no other reason than to have a bond of love in the life of this world, between yourselves [and your forebears]: but then, on Resurrection Day, you shall disown one another and curse one another - for the goal of you all will be the fire, and you will have none to succour you.

Again, neither passage contains any word starting with "chil", which discounts child and children. One more combo to go...take it away "love children". Not meaning to give away the ending, but the Koran is about to not say what Simmons is claiming it does.

5:18 (Asad) And [both] the Jews and the Christians say, "We are God's children, and His beloved ones." Say: "Why, then, does He cause you to suffer for your sins? Nay, you are but human beings of His creating. He forgives whom He wills, and He causes to suffer whom He wills: for God's is the dominion over the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and with Him is all journeys' end."

7:31 (Asad) O children of Adam! Beautify yourselves for every act of worship, and eat and drink [freely], but do not waste: verily, He does not love the wasteful!

74:13 (Asad) and children as [love's] witnesses,

Hey, hold on, that first passage in the above block looks sort of close. Let's examine it closely and see what it says. Hey Jews and Christians! You aren't God's chosen people. You suffer because God wants you to suffer! Compare that again to what Simmons claims the Koran says: God loves all the children of Abraham, even the Jews and the Christians. One comes from the book itself: the other comes from a political effort.

Even a rough precursory glance can tell you that this is a load of bumpkiss.

Moses, Leviticus 24:19-20: If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured.

Jesus, Matthew 5:38-39: You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Jesus, John 14:6: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me

Muhammed, Qur'an 8:39: Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah.

So there you (briefly) have it. Not all prophets are cut from the same cloth, and regardless of what their times or skin colours had to do with anything, they had substantially different messages.